April 18, 2017
What America Can Learn from China’s People’s Liberation Army
President Trump recently called for a $54 billion increase in military spending to “send a message to the world… of American strength, security, and resolve.” The U.S. defense establishment is currently grappling with how these additional funds should be spent to achieve the stated objective. Merely investing in increasing the size of our forces is ineffective. Instead, the United States must prioritize modernizing its capabilities to meet new types of threats. As the United States advances down this path, it could look towards an unlikely source for inspiration: the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). China watchers around the world continue to characterize the PLA as a “paper tiger”, but the United States could stand to learn a thing or two about force modernization from its Asian counterpart.
China’s last major conflict with a foreign adversary, its failed offensive in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war, led foreign commentators and military experts to deem the PLA a “ragtag” military that was disorganized and underfunded. Generally, the PLA lacked the technology and organizational wherewithal needed to fight even the smallest of adversaries. Today, the PLA has undergone massive military modernization efforts. They still note that the PLA is “not ready” to fight in a modern war due to technological gaps in China’s air defense, the nature of the bureaucratic and corrupt Chinese state, and its lack of combat experience.
Read the full article at The National Interest.
More from CNAS
-
Global Swing States and the New Great Power Competition
The United States should prioritize these six countries in their foreign policy, encouraging swing state governments to choose policies that reflect the core principles of int...
By Richard Fontaine & Gibbs McKinley
-
The Pentagon’s AUKUS Review is an Opportunity — If Done Right
The reality is that U.S. military assistance to Ukraine and Taiwan has starkly highlighted for policymakers the real limits of the U.S. industrial base to meet demand across a...
By Jennifer Hendrixson White
-
Defense & Aerospace Air Power Podcast [Jun 26, 25] Season 3 E25: Focus Forward
Just when people were saying the future of air power was small, distributed systems like UAVs, the US struck Iran’s nuclear program infrastructure with an old-fashioned manned...
By Stacie Pettyjohn
-
Indo-Pacific Security / Energy, Economics & Security
75 Years Post-Korean War: Can Trust Be Rebuilt Under the New Administration?As President Lee Jae Myung begins his term, he's taking visible steps to reset the tone with North Korea: halting propaganda broadcasts and reemphasizing past military agreeme...
By Dr. Go Myong-Hyun